The Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments in America are part of a political campaign waged by the Republican Party to vote President Barack Obama out of office in 2012 elections, says a US journalist.
“By attacking Muslims, they [US Republicans] are actually waging a political campaign that they think will have consequences in 2012,” said Max Blumenthal in an interview with Press TV.
The award-winning journalist said that the Republicans “… see every Muslim in the US as a symbol of the Federal government… because of this misperception of Barack Obama as himself a Muslim.”
Blumenthal cited a recent poll that showed 50 percent of Republicans believe Barack Obama is not an American because of his middle name “Hussein.”
The best-seller author, however, pointed out that Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry in the US can be traced back to 1930s and 40s when the Americans were fed with anti-Arab propaganda.
“It goes back all the way to the 1930s and 40s when the American public was bombarded with anti-Arab/orientalist images and their popular cultures,” said Max Blumenthal.
Blumenthal referred to racist cartoons like Ali Baba by Leon Schlesinger, the animator with major motion picture production company, the Warner Brothers, and movies such as Exodus, about the foundation of the Israeli regime.
He went on to say that this pre-existing context was turned into a political campaign in the 1990s with the widely publicized documentary Jihad in America by pro-Israeli journalist and self-styled terror expert Steven Emerson, who claimed that there were Muslim-led terror cells inside the US.
The journalist said that the events of 9/11 provided the catalyst for Emerson to put his campaign of demonizing Arabs on a national level.
On March 20, Terry Jones, a US pastor with the Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Florida, stirred outrage worldwide by burning a copy of Qur’an, Muslims’ holy book, after holding a mock trial at his fringe church.
Ten UN foreign workers were killed after a small number of furious protesters stormed the UN headquarters in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif against the background of a growing anti-Western sentiments in the country.
On Thursday, March 10, 2011, the Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing entitled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”
US Congressman Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and openly allied with Israel, claimed that some Muslim leaders are not doing enough to help the police and the FBI investigate terror plots that originate in the US.
Critics of the New York Congressman say the hearing would feed anti-Islamic sentiments and slam King for singling out Muslims.
MN/PKH/MB
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